English Bulldog breed in jeopardy

[hiero2]

Originally Posted by marino760

English bulldogs are just the tip of the iceberg. Sadly, some if not many dog breeds have suffered greatly through poor breeding . . .

Things are exactly as you say. We can see this trend today for Belgian herding dogs. They are typically called, over here in the US, after the region where they are commonly found - Begian Tervurens, Malinois, etc. We seem to want to call them a "breed", and think of them as only being bred by breed. What is becoming the "breed" is just the physical look from a given region. But I've been told that in Belgium, these dogs are bred together when there is a good match. They are working dogs after all.

In one of his books, Coppinger talks about this, and goes through some numbers - something like if you start with less than 500 studs for the breed - you inevitably and automatically have inbreeding within a few generations*. Even a well-intentioned breeder can't overcome the raw numbers. I've noticed this in Canaan dogs - even though this is a breed that was only village dogs less than a hundred years ago - they are starting to have breed-specific genetic issues. The gene pool is just too small.

If somebody can find that section and provide a quote, that would be wonderful. I borrowed the book, so don't have it for reference. I think I'm approximately right on the numbers - but I might not be. However, his point, as I understood it, was that inbreeding was nearly inevitable in modern breeds.

And, as you and that web article I linked to point out - the whole breeding for appearance has gotten very unhealthy for the dogs. And it has become more extreme as time goes by - not less so.